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Birthday Stories

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First edition (publ. 中央公論新社)

Birthday Stories (バースデイ・ストーリーズ, Bāsudei sutōrīzu = Birthday stories) is a 2002 short story anthology edited by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Despite the theme's happy connotations most of the short stories have a dark, melancholic atmosphere.

Editions

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Murakami selected and translated the texts, adding an original short story of his own (later collected into his Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 2006). For the English edition at Harvill Press (using the original English-language versions of the stories), he added an introduction and selected one more story, Claire Keegan’s “Close to the Water’s Edge”. For the Japanese reprint, he added the translation of Keegan’s story, and one more story, Lewis Robinson’s “The ride”. The main editions are thus:

  • 2002: Japanese-language, 11 stories.[1]
  • 2004: English-language, 12 stories plus introduction.[2]
  • 2006: Japanese-language, 13 stories.[3]

Contents

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The 2004 English edition of the anthology starts with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, where he speaks about his birthday and of birthdays in general (for example he mentions his visit to Jack London's farm, which he made because he liked London's writings and because they share the same birthday).

It compiles:

References

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  1. ^ OCLC 51550239
  2. ^ OCLC 56458981
  3. ^ OCLC 63208189